UPMC deploys Wi-Fi-based RFID

PITTSBURGH – University of Pittsburgh Medical Center has implemented RFID technology to automate temperature monitoring at UPMC St. Margaret Hospital, and it will soon roll out wireless monitoring and asset tracking across most of its U.S. hospitals.

Officials say UPMC will deploy AeroScout’s Healthcare Visibility Solutions, which use advanced radio frequency identification (RFID) technology that will leverage UPMC’s standard Wi-Fi network to avoid the purchase, installation and maintenance of a proprietary RFID network.

After researching real-time location systems (RTLS) for several years, UPMC decided to use a Wi-Fi-based solution to leverage the investment in its Wi-Fi network and the related expertise it had developed, officials say. AeroScout technology can use low frequency and ultrasound for additional use cases such as par level management, and offers integration capabilities to allow other UPMC software providers to utilize location and condition information, for instance, temperature readings, for specific clinical and operational applications.

"After our extensive testing and due diligence, it was clear to us that Wi-Fi-based healthcare visibility solutions were not only the best model for our health system, but also the standard that would prevail industry-wide because of the important advantages they offer over proprietary systems," said James Venturella, CIO, Physician and Hospital Services at UPMC. "By using our existing Wi-Fi infrastructure, the AeroScout solutions are easier to deploy, allowing us to see the associated productivity and patient care benefits more quickly."

The asset management technology enables UPMC staff to track the location of critical medical equipment throughout its facilities, ensuring that it's at the right place at the right time and eliminating the need to manually search for items.

UPMC uses the temperature monitoring solution to automatically and wirelessly monitor the temperature of refrigerators and freezers, helping prevent spoilage of medicines, vaccines and even food. Both applications free up a significant amount of time so that staff can focus on caring for patients, officials say.

Following the success of its current implementation, UPMC plans to extend the technology. It will use AeroScout when it introduces a SmartRoom system at its new UPMC East hospital in Monroeville, which is scheduled to open this summer. Officials say the SmartRoom will use RTLS to identify caregivers as they walk into a patient’s room and provide clinicians with real-time, relevant information at the patient’s bedside.

White House Summit In Denial On Regulating Health Care Costs

By Jamie Court for the Huffington Post–

“Prevention” was the word of morning at the White House Western forum on health care reform in downtown LA.

Led by Oprah’s Dr. Oz, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Washington State Governor Chris Gregoire, the assembled “stakeholders” rattled off how prevention pays in health care.

20% of the patients account for 80% of the costs. 75% of the costs spring from four conditions. The most expensive medicine is bad medicine It’s no doubt true, but keeping kids out of McDonalds, treating heart disease preventively, and making sure Grandma takes her medicine isn’t going to get us where we need to go in health care reform.

We need to rein in the charges of the medical-insurance complex. And that’s a subject the politicians, hospitals, insurers, doctors and health care professionals assembled today didn’t want to acknowledge.

Well, it’s true, health care reform boils down to regulation of medical charges, which is hardly popular with the medical establishment. None of the two hours set aside today in largely scripted testimony dealt with the public option to the private market or mandatory health insurance and how to make it affordable.

The kumbaya spirit was encouraging, but the reality is standardization of medical insurance charges and costs is going to determine whether there is enough money in the health care system to cover everyone. The Obama Administration largely listened today, but Schwarzeneggeer was selling three essentials in health care reform: 1) getting all the stakeholders together 2) mandatory health care 3) prevention. Only #3, prevention, will have a positive impact on reform. To please the stakeholders with consensus risks letting their out of control costs remain out of control. Making health insurance mandatory on its own won’t bring costs down, and Americans are losing coverage today because they cannot afford it. Schwarzenegger refused to regulate premiums in his failed 2007-2008 effort and Capitol Hill is not likely to do better.

The California Nurses Association brought nearly one thousand nurses and activists to a rally on the street outside the forum. Their calls for a Medicare For All system weren’t heard in the auditorium, but guests couldn’t miss the message as we entered the auditorium. The testimonials from patients inside were heart breaking, but none of the answers from so-called stakeholders inside were compelling. None of the solutions dealt with how patients who lost coverage would be able to afford it again under an overhaul where the only cost savings come from medical prevention.

At some point the White House is going to need to get tough on health care and insurance charges, in addition to trying to pay for performance through “comparative effectiveness,” which Obama has promoted. A truly public option like Medicare offers the best hope to drive down costs and force the insurers to compete. Recently, Senate health reform architect Senator Max Baucus seemed to suggest the public option was not really needed. In the absence of health care cost standardization and regulation, a genuine public option may be national health care reform’s main saving grace. Let’s just hope Obama isn’t in as much as denial about the need for cost regulation as the assembled potentates today.